Tag: radicalisation

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IN2PREV-en News Projects

FUNDEA emphasizes ethical and human rights considerations to improve refugee integration

Between the 15th and the 17th January, it took place in Poznan – Poland- the first Capacity Building Training Seminars “Facilitating Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ Integration through Mentoring”, organized as a strategic initiative under the IN2PREV “Law enforcement and community cooperation and training approach to prevent radicalisation by ensuring refugees’ successful inclusion” project.

This 1st 3-day in-person training CBTS was coordinated by the Polish Platform for Homeland Security (PPHS) and the Innovative Prison Systems (IPS) – members of the Consortium – and focused on developing the capacity of participants to promote and foster the successful integration of persons in refugee and asylum seeker-like situations into their host communities, particularly considering their vulnerabilities to being targeted and exploited by radicalising and extremist agents. It counted with the participation of around 45 participants, from 9 European countries: Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

One form of integration is through mentoring. The 1st CBTS provided skills to practically utilise the IN2PREV Mentoring Programme to support persons in refugee and asylum seeker-like situations to foster social inclusion. The implementation of this mentoring programme will last 6 months, from February to July 2025, and that will be organized mainly in the 7 countries of the Consortium partners, which are: Spain, Portugal, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

FUNDEA’S participation

In addition to the contribution in the preparation for the training, FUNDEA’s participation was in facilitating three sessions:

  • Ethical and Human Rights compliant Principles for Practitioners, that was facilitated by Rascha Albaba Acosta, Researcher and Project Officer at the foundation, whom provided guidelines for practitioners to implement a human rights-based approach when implementing mentoring programs and in other interventions as well.
  • Refugee and asylum seeker communities’ vulnerabilities to successful integration: The IN2PREV findings, that was facilitated online by Lucia Alonso Pérez, Researcher and Project Officer at the foundation, who presented the key findings of a study that interviewed 32 practitioners and stakeholders to identify common factors, elements and dimensions that may contribute to identifying potential indicators of the procedures and tools developed in Europe to screen radicalisation vulnerabilities among asylum seekers and refugees.
  • Moderation of a panel discussion with practitioners, whom presented their country experiences in the integration of refugees and asylum seekers, and best practices, challenges and lessons learnt to consider when implementing mentoring programmes. The panel discussion was moderated by Rascha Albaba Acosta, Researcher and Project Officer at the foundation.

In addition to FUNDEA participation as a Consortium partner of the IN2PREV project, three Spanish partners participated in the training, as experts in implementing integration approaches with asylum seekers and refugees in Spain, including through mentoring programmes, whom will pilot the IN2PREV mentoring programme with mentees in addition to others.

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EN Interrad News Projects

The Euro-Arab Foundation trains the ‘Guardia Civil’ to Prevent Radicalisation from a Mental Health Perspective

For two days, on December 3rd and 4th, a course on “Assessment of the Risk of Radicalization and Extreme Violence: Indicators in Vulnerable Populations” was held in Madrid. The course was aimed at the Civil Guard in their role as judicial police. The training, inaugurated by Antonio Sánchez, the Executive Secretary of the Euro-Arab Foundation, was delivered by experts in the prevention of radicalization, including Javier Ruipérez, Director of the Euro-Arab Research and International Projects Department, and Daniel F. Pérez, a Euro-Arab researcher. It also included expert mental health professionals, Eva Jiménez and Susana Sánchez.

The course focused on enhancing the participants’ ability to prepare robust judicial reports in cases of radicalization and extreme violence. To this end, Euro-Arab experts addressed key issues such as models and theories of radicalization, followed by presentations on risk assessment tools and the factors and indicators that can lead to extremist violence. In addition, practical exercises with real-world cases were conducted to reinforce the acquired knowledge.

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EN Interrad EUKH EN News Projects RADICALIZACION EN

The Euro-Arab Foundation participates in the EUROCRIM Annual Congress with an interdisciplinary panel on policies for the prevention of violent extremism

From September 11 to 14, the Annual Congress of the European Society of Criminology, EUROCRIM, in its twenty-fourth edition, is taking place at the University of Bucharest. The Executive Secretary of the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies, Antonio Sanchez, and the Director of Research and Projects of the same, Javier Ruipérez, have participated with the panel Interdisciplinary approaches to radicalization, political violence, and the relationship between terrorism and crime to advance P/CVE (Program for the Prevention and Combating of Violent Extremism).

The panel, moderated by Sánchez, is part of the INTERRAD project whose aim is to contribute to the challenge of Security, Safety and Defense by addressing cooperation in the prevention of violent radicalization of a jihadist nature in the framework of the European Union (EU) through an interdisciplinary perspective. Ruipérez presented an update on P/CVE strategic communications. Other speakers were:

  • Carlos Echeverría Jesús, Professor of Terrorism and International Relations at UNED, who spoke about the role of Daesh and Al-Qaeda as central actors in the expansion of jihadist ideology;
  • Roberto Muelas Lobato, Assistant Professor and Doctor of the University of Burgos in the Area of Social Psychology, and member of the research group Social Inclusion and Quality of Life, who spoke about the side effects of the program for the prevention of violent extremism ‘Fenix Andalucía’; and
  • Salvador Berdún Carrión, PhD in Criminology from the University of Granada and Director of the Department of Studies of ACAIP, who addressed the influence of National Security and terrorism in European Prison Regimes.
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EUKH EN RADICALIZACION EN The Euro-Arab Papers

Radicalisation in prisons analysis of the Escribano operation and prospects for prevention

The Euro-Arab Foundation has taken an in-depth look at Operation Escribano, considered a milestone in the fight against terrorism in Spanish prisons, with a publication that offers an exhaustive analysis of this complex police operation, which is the first conviction for terrorism in the Spanish prison context since 2008 and the first after the reform of the crime of terrorism in 2015. The authors of this analysis, published in a new issue in the Cuadernos de la Euroárabe collection, were: Daniel F. Pérez-García, researcher and head of projects in the area of prevention of radicalisation and violent extremism at the Euro-Arab Foundation, expert in the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation of the European Commission, where the Euro-Arab Foundation actively participates; Salvador Berdún Carrión, Director of the Studies Department of the Agrupación de Cuerpos de Ayudantes de Instituciones Penitenciarias and Doctor in Criminology; and Javier Ruipérez Canales, Director of the Research and Projects Department of the Euro-Arab Foundation, Doctor in Social Sciences and Director of Strategic Communication of the EU Knowledge Hub.

Analysis of Operation Escribano and prospects for prevention

On 12 February 2024, the 4th Section of the Criminal Division of the National Court issued Sentence number 4/2024, in which it sentenced two inmates to seven years and six months in prison. The defendants, who were already serving sentences for belonging to a terrorist organisation, were tried within the framework of what is known as Operation Escribano, which succeeded in dismantling an entire radicalising structure in Spanish prisons and stands as the largest investigation carried out in Europe into the radicalisation of the Daesh terrorist organisation in prisons. The review of judicial, legislative, academic and strategic documentation in the Euro-Arab publication has been complemented with interviews with the sources of the Guardia Civil police investigation and presents the analysis of the radical networks dismantled in this operation.

The main objective of the analysis is to extract good practices in order to optimise prevention strategies within the prison environment. The recommendations include respect for the guarantee of human rights in judicial processes, in prison treatment and in the assessment of the risk of radicalisation, and the promotion of programmes for the rehabilitation of violent extremism and social and functional reintegration in democratic societies.

The publication (in Spanish) can be downloaded from the Euro-Arab Foundation’s website: https://fundea.org/cuaderno-euroarabe-radicalizacion-en-prisiones/

Radicalisation in prisons analysis of the Escribano operation and prospects for prevention


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The Euro-Arab Foundation and the Iraqi Al Nahrain Center solidify a partnership to exchange knowledge and conduct joint researches

A. Sánchez, secretario ejecutivo de FUNDEA, y Ali Naser Bunya, director general del centro Al Nahrain tras la firma del convenio en la sede de FUNDEA (Granada).
FUNDEA- Al Nahrain Center

The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies has signed this Wednesday a collaboration agreement with the Al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies – National Security Consulting, based in Baghdad (Iraq), in order to cooperate and establish productive relationships in different fields of the research undertaken by both institutions.

The Al-Nahrain Centre for Strategic Studies is a research centre sponsored by the Iraqi National Security Council that develops strategic studies responding to the interests, challenges and threats of the Arab country, both at the national level and in the Middle East region.

The meeting took place at the Euro-Arab headquarters, in Granada, where the Iraqi delegation was led by the Director General of the Al-Nahrain Centre for Strategic Studies, the lawyer Ali Naser Bunyan al-Lami, accompanied by the Engineer Director General of the Directorate of Administration and Finance of the Office of the Iraqi National Security Advisor, Hayder Abdulameer Abed al-Yasiri, and the Head of the Department of Social and Psychological Studies of the Al-Nahrain Centre for Strategic Studies, Shatha Kadhim , and the official liaison of the European Union Consultative Mission in Iraq, Marwah Dallyousif.

The meetings between both institutions, which lasted two days, were also attended by an official from the Directorate General for Home Affairs (DG Home) of the European Commission.

The executive secretary of the Euro-Arab Foundation, Antonio J. Sánchez Ortega, stated that this agreement “consolidates our presence in the MENA region and in Iraq, where understanding the current security and prevention conditions is crucial.” Sánchez has expressed his satisfaction at the establishment of this link with an Iraqi center – he said – “so prestigious that it houses ten different research departments. Without a doubt, both institutions will benefit from this collaboration.”

The memorandum includes among its objectives the exchange of research and studies, as well as books, statistics and other types of information arising from their respective work. The Euro-Arab Foundation and the Al-Nahrain Centre will work together on projects that are characterised by their strategic and topical dimensions, or those related to public policies. In terms of scientific dissemination and training, the agreement covers joint research or studies, as well as the organisation of workshops, seminars and conferences in areas of common interest or the joint publication of books and publications.

“This agreement is part of the objectives of our centre, which are based on the directives of the advisor to the Iraqi National Security Board and which consist of establishing relations with different centres dedicated to research and cultural dissemination,” explained the director general of the Al Nahrain centre, Ali Naser Bunyan. “The Euro-Arab Foundation not only addresses these aspects -he added- but it also works to strengthen dialogue with the Arab world, of which Iraq is a part.“

The programme of activities included the presentation of the Euro-Arab Foundation’s research, cultural and training activities, such as the new Diploma in Environmental Management and Social Responsibility or the Diploma in Management of Non-Profit Entities or Endowment Management (awqaf) for Saudi students. Likewise, several of the research projects in which Euro-Arab is involved in different areas were presented: prevention of radicalisation and violent extremism, fight against hate speech and hate crimes, protection of places of worship of different faiths, dismantling of human trafficking networks or socio-educational interventions, among others.

As part of the extensive programme of activities, the visiting delegation was able to learn first-hand about the Joint Centre University of Granada – Army Training and Doctrine Command with a visit to the MADOC, where they were able to learn more about its activities at national level. The programme included cultural activities, such as a visit to La Madraza, the cultural centre of the University of Granada (https://lamadraza.ugr.es/).

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EUKH EN News Projects RADICALIZACION EN

We participate in the RAN YOUNG meeting where youth take the floor to confront polarisation and hate speeches

The third meeting of the RAN Practitioners Young Platform, the platform of young people, experts on radicalisation and prevention of the European Commission’s Radicalisation Awareness Network, took place in Zagreb (Croatia) on 2nd and 3rd May. Among the participants was Euro-Arab Foundation researcher Daniel Pérez García who together with the other young people explored the local impact of global challenges, such as war and international conflicts, on European youth and created proposals to mitigate the different repercussions on themselves and their communities.

Daniel Pérez García, researcher at the Euro-Arab Foundation, participates in RAN Young Practitioners

The recommendations revolved around four themes: mental health, polarisation, hate speech and hate crime. The Euro-Arab researcher was part of the hate crime group, which addressed how hate speech and hate crimes can precede atrocities, including genocide, or the use of social media and digital platforms as facilitators of the spread of hate.

The meeting concluded that hate speech, along with misinformation, leads to stigmatisation, discrimination and violence on a large scale, and emphasised the need not to underestimate the influence of global conflicts on individuals that can even lead to collective trauma.

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EN PARTES News Projects

The PARTES consortium meets in Brussels to exchange achievements and learnings

The entities associated in PARTES, the European project that seeks to protect places of worship, met on April 22nd and 23rd in Brussels in order to share the lessons learned and achievements reached so far. The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies is part of it and its researcher, José Luis Salido Medina, coordinated the PARTES Conference held in Melilla in March, which brought together representatives of different religious confessions.

Our reasearcher attended both, the workshop on April 22, and the Steering Committee on the 23rd. The workshop discussed the current challenges and issues that places of worship are facing. It also addressed the importance of bridging the communication gaps that may exist between the various religious communities and between them and the authorities. On its part, the fourth meeting of the PARTES Steering Committee was held to evaluate the work of the project over the past four months, identify key issues for discussion and develop a collaborative plan for the coming months.

Currently, the PARTES consortium is compiling local communication and security strategies to protect places of worship in ten European Union countries.

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EUKH EN News RADICALIZACION EN

The Euro-Arab Foundation organizes the Seminar ‘Trends and Scenarios of Global Terrorism’

INFORME OIET CUADRADO ok - 1

The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies, based in Granada, will host on Monday, April 29, the Seminar “Trends and Scenarios of Global Terrorism”. The event will be opened by Antonio Sanchez, executive secretary of the Euro-Arab Foundation, and Carlos Igualada, director of the International Observatory for Terrorism Studies (OIET), which has edited the Yearbook.

Javier Ruipérez Canales, director of the Department of Research and Projects of the Euro-Arab Foundation and main researcher of the Area of Prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism, will start the seminar with a lecture on the opportunities presented by prevention policies.

Next, Carlos Igualada will present the Jihadist Terrorism Yearbook 2023, the most recent study on the trends, actors and current challenges of global jihadism published by the OIET. Igualada has been one of the coordinators of the report and will present the main data on jihadism at a global level, as well as the current situation of jihadism in Spain based on the fight against terrorism.

The third presentation will be given by Ana Aguilera, senior researcher at the OIET and coordinator of the Yearbook, who will talk about jihadist trends in West Africa in 2023. The seminar will be closed by Daniel Perez, a researcher at the Euro-Arab Foundation specialized in the prevention of radicalization and violent extremism. Perez will address the rehabilitation of women returnees from Syria and Iraq in the European Union. These topics are included in two chapters of this Yearbook, which also includes analyses on jihadist activity in Southeast Asia, on jihadist propaganda in Europe, as well as mechanisms and resources to attend to the victims of jihadist terrorism. 

The presentation of the Jihadist Terrorism Yearbook 2023 will begin on Monday, April 29 at 5 p.m. in the Assembly Hall of the Euro-Arab Foundation at 27 San Jeronimo Street in Granada. Admission will be free until full capacity is reached.

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The Euro-Arab Foundation participates in training on violent radicalisation and jihadist extremism

Pirámide de la prevención y afrontamiento de la radicalización violenta
Pirámide de la prevención y afrontamiento de la radicalización violenta. Una guía para profesionales de primera línea. Publicada por la Universidad de Córdoba y coeditado por CIFAL y la Fundación Euroárabe.

This Thursday, the Euro-Arab Foundation gave the seminar Prevention of Radicalisation in the EU and Member States: policies, strategies and areas of action from multi-level and multi-agency approaches, as part of the University Course on violent radicalisation and jihadist extremism organised by the University Centre of the Civil Guard, attached to the Carlos III University of Madrid, and aimed at the Civil Guard, the judiciary and local authorities.

Javier Ruipérez, Director of Research and Projects at the Euro-Arab Foundation, and Daniel Pérez, researcher at the same, were in charge of this training, whose objectives were to contextualise the launch and consolidation of European prevention policies; to review the evolution of the psychosocial models that explain radicalisation and to address the multi-agency and multi-level prevention approach.

Spanish National counter-terrorism strategy

In this seminar, the Spanish National Strategy against Terrorism (ENCOT-2023), which was approved this week by the National Security Council, served as an example within the state plans that reflect the strategic recommendations of the European Commission.

The researchers from the Euro-Arab Foundation, both belonging to the Area of Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism, stressed that prevention policies, whether European, national or local, ‘must be based on scientific knowledge, for which it is essential to study both risk indicators and protection indicators, and that it should be a cross-cutting approach that can be used for jihadism as well as for multiple ideologies’.

On the one hand, the need to invest more in primary prevention, the first level of the pyramidal representation of society to which the majority of the non-radicalised population belongs, was stressed. The second level covers the population susceptible to radicalisation and the third level covers radical or terrorist individuals.

For the Euro-Arab experts, there is a risk of population transfer from the first level to the third, due to the current process of polarisation, and the measures to be taken in that case would be much more difficult to implement and much more costly. To avoid this, they said, “it is essential to focus on prevention policies in protection and on people’s resilience and autonomy”.

Finally, the importance of “bringing European policy down to the local level”, through national plans, and ensuring that there is feedback, i.e. “that the local level also inspires national plans and European policies to combat violent radicalisation and extremism”, was also highlighted.

The Euro-Arab Foundation, through its research group, has carried out various training activities on the prevention of radicalisation in European projects in which it participates, in Spanish universities or through the European Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN).

Prevention and coping with violent radicalisation. A guide for frontline practitioners. Published by the University of Cordoba and co-published by CIFAL and the Euro-Arab Foundation.

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EN Mirad News Projects RADICALIZACION EN

MIRAD project ends bringing together research, policy and practice in the fight against multi-ideological radicalisation

Evento final de MIRAD
Evento final de MIRAD

The final event of the European MIRAD project ended two years of work dedicated to assestment and prevention of radicalisation. The objectives of the MIRAD project were achieved thanks to the cooperation of the project consortium partners, to which the Euro-Arab Foundation belongs,  from seven European countries, together with a group of experts from the MIRAD Advisory Board, the KES Advisory Council and members of the Expert Boards on Jihadist Extremism and Right-wing Extremism.

The event was opened by Christiane Hoehn, Principal Advisor to the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, who acknowledged the good work of the MIRAD project and its alignment with the strategic orientations of the European Commission. The final conference was attended by leading practitioners, prison staff, security forces, probation officers, NGOs and policy makers from different EU and non-EU countries.

During the event, the results of the project were presented, such as a tool to assess the reliability and capacity of NGOs to support de-radicalisation processes. Among the most expected results, the adaptation of the IRS risk assessment tool to consider the role of gender and ideology in the radicalisation process with a focus on right-wing extremism and jihadist extremism stands out.

Besides, a series of collaborative protocols for multi-agency transition were presented, stemming from the key role played by CSOs/NGOs and volunteers in promoting reintegration programmes, fostering inter-agency cooperation. The results of mixed-method training courses (training of trainers, e-Learning course, virtual reality training scenarios) to maximise the results of radicalisation disengagement and reintegration programmes were also made public.

Some of the conclusions reached at the final MIRAD event were the still high threat of islamist terrorism and the growing danger of right-wing extremism. The need for rehabilitation outside and inside prison and the need to assess what happens after prison was also addressed, as well as the identification of prisoners vulnerable to radicalisation as a basis for prevention and disengagement, and the promotion of models and protocols for inter-sectoral and inter-institutional collaboration.